Put on Those Rose-Colored Glasses

Optimism can reduce the risk of health problems after stressful life events and may help people recover from events faster, according to a Finnish study, reported in the July 2005 issue of Health Psychology.

Researchers assessed the optimism and pessimism levels of 5,007 municipal employees in 1997 and again in 2000. During the study 284 employees experienced a stressful major life event, defined as death or severe illness of a spouse or child or the severe illness of another family member. The researchers accessed data on sick days kept by the employers and calculated the number of sick days people took in the 36 months prior to the event and 18 months after the event.

While all participants had an increase in sick days after the event, people with high optimism had smaller increases in sick days, and their number of sick days returned to pre-event levels faster than people with low optimism.